Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
Quote from last Ortoire update.
"As we continue to pressure test the facility, we will finalize the electrical and instrumentation connections required "
This comment confused me a little at the time with regards the meaning of the word finalise. Could mean many different things from finalising the physical connection ( putting the plug in the socket) or finalising the design which would mean pre-procurement, pre-award of the installation contract, pre-installation and pre-commissioning and a long wait. Frustrating choice of terminology, must be the way they say things in Canada, or that someone forgot that the separate instrumentation systems do actually need to talk to one another.
Adon. Production tubing is not cemented in place. Casing is cemented to seal between the formation and the casing and to prevent migration of fluids or gas up the outside of the casing which could end up on the drill floor and create an explosive atmosphere or kill everyone with a dose of H2s. Production tubing (which were told it was) goes inside the casing and hangs from--erm, a hanger ! Ingenious terminology used in this case, or it could be a packer which is a less obvious terminology. They may centralise the tubing in the casing by the use of erm 'centralisers'.
This cement squeeze they are on about is to reseal any gaps between the casing and the formation that may have arisen due to the huge uncontrolled flow that they experienced. Production tubing comes in approx 30ft lengths and although has high mechanical strength, wear, and corrosion characteristics, it is relatively flimsy and light weight compared to heavy drill pipe so far as my ageing memory can recall. The thing about the hydrostatic pressure is that when the bigger diamer drill pipe is lowered in and pulled out of the mud down the hole, the weight on the producing area will be constantly changing. They don't want to be pulling out too quickly as it will cause a pressure drop at the bottom due to a reduced hydrostatic head and potentially lead to another blow out. The could increase the mud weight to such an extent that it will always control the well pressure, but they don't want to make it too heavy such that they won't be able to rotate the drill string/pipe or pull out the currently stuck pipe. What they are doing is a slow process with a potential high risk if they don't keep the well under control. Folk on here need to realise this before hanging the CEO out to dry for being optimistic for an early result--which clearly hasn't been possible. Going for a lay down now. :)
Mc Doog. I spent 8 years drilling with Stena Drilling up in Sunny Scotland. the older I get, the more I realise how little I know lol. But fishing production tubing is a nightmare as it is relatively thin metal compared to drill pipe. If it has managed to become damaged such that it doesnt stay on the end of the string then how long it will take is like saying how long is a piece of string !.. If the drill string was still intact but bent, compressed and jammed in the hole, there is a better chance of pulling it very slowly and then once the next tool joint arrives at the rig floor, break it out and start pulling again. Slow but sure. If it has broken into separate lengths then pulling each one and hoping that it doesn't break into even more sections is a nightmare. In the end--it will be resolved even if the well needs plugging and sidetracking from the point where the well damage is too much, it will get done. I have written off 16-2 at least for now as the time/cost/risk/benefit compared with other opportunities may not stack up. Current SP in my opinion is set for failure at 36-2 therefore success should give 100% from here by Oct-ish, well, end of the year.
In my humble, they are still picking out bits of broken pipe. If anyone else on here has been through anything like this then they will know that its a bit like those fairground machines where you put your money in and try to grab a prize with a little crane and then drip it into the winning chute. You pick it up, try to move it and it falls off, you try it again, get it in the air and it falls off etc etc. Now try and to this thousand of feet below ground. You manage to clamp om or screw into a bit of pipe, start pulling slowly and it breaks off 10ft below where you have screwed onto. You then have to pull that 10ft piece all the way to the surface whilst disconnecting each section of the drill pipe, rack it into the derrick, remove the 10ft pice when it comes to surface and then go all the way back in the hole to try and get a bigger piece next time. and in the meantime keep a close eye on the hydrostatic pressure as you pull out and run-in. Keep a kill pill ready to pump down the hole to add to the hydrostatic if necessary. Once all the pipe is out, the well would need a clean out and then reassessment. They could have given us a bit more info, by telling us they are still fishing which as an interim update would have been good enough. They cannot possibly give timescales but a current activities notice would have been helpful. In any case, I added some at 3.79p even though I said I wouldn't until I knew the well was good to go. Might regret it, might not !.
Dunders... I was part of the construction team at Dragon in Milford in 2005/6, but I'm in Kent now, Isle of Grain. Can't really comment on property, but Rochester seems to be expanding and doing OK, just have to watch for over development.
What are we waiting for here?. It's been so long, I cant remember. Just CN3? or something else as well.
Photo.
I work in the largest LNG import/export terminal in Europe, we have a few bits of pipe, a few storage tanks 'n that, but we don't have a wellhead. We store the LNG then re-gas it, then compress it, so out 'wellhead pressure' is achieved by the compressors. We chuck out the gas at 70 bar on the high pressure transmission system which is about 1000psi through a 36" and a 24" pipeline and then there is a medium pressure at 38bar or about 500psi and the a low pressure at 2bar, 30psi. So, my point about the 600-750 psi Casc operating pressure is a respectable figure. (When they finally get some gas through it !)
Photo.
Pressure at the well head when shut-in will be higher than when it is flowing---that's one part of your question. i've no idea what the pressure will be when it's flowing.
The facility operating pressure, and the distribution pipework will operate in a range of 600-750psi, which is a fairly normal range.
The pressure from the well, may have to be reduced to suit the distribution system, however, don't forget that the well production tubing is a very small diameter in relative terms to the Casca facility pipework, therefore to get the flow rate through a small orifice, the pressure and velocity will have to be very high, both will then drop down when it flows into larger diameter vessels and pipework, but the volume will remain more or less the same. There will of course be various PRV's, PCV's Slam Shuts and other valves in the system to protect the facility from over pressure.
The extract from the rns that you included is basically telling us that the well head pressure is excellent and the Casc facility has been built, also to handle relatively high pressure. both bits of info are good news.
TYB, Ok, but it looked like 2 questions to me. "Ezhik as opposed to members posting here fake buys whilst simultaneously deramping the stock they just supposedly purchased? And they are allowed to post?"
Anyhow whatever you meant.
Bit of a late reply here tyb, but maybe admin spotted a dual ID with the same I.P. address and then deleted the posts. I certainly never reported the post and have in fact never reported any post. I am someone that believes in mixed views, good bad or ugly and amongst them, somewhere lies the picture of what is and maybe happening with a stock, but with reference to that new 'CEO' poster, there had been no large trades recently and not enough volume over a period of a couple of weeks that you could add together and come anywhere near to 5m so it was obviously nonsense.
What Ch hasn't appreciated is the time/cost/difficulty of fishing out damaged pipe. Either he hasn't been properly informed or was just hoping that it would be resolved quickly. Fishing out bits of broken tubing is painstakingly slow and as someone has already mentioned, the damage will get worse the deeper they get. CH is the CEO, he doesn't have to be a drilling specialist but relies upon those that are, therefore if they are not telling him worst case/best case then they are perhaps not the right people for the job. We may still be faced with cementing it in and re drilling it if the well damage is such that it would be too risky to attempt to test the well with the obvious high pressures present. 100% upside by circa Oct if all goes to plan--with new wells on line too.
@maestro1. It'll be costing someone, that's for sure. RED were contracted to drill the well, it depends upon the T's and C's of that contract but hopefully they will be liable for some/most of the costs. I guess it rather depends upon where the incompetence lies. Well design, incorrect bha design, geology, mud type/weight, driller nodding off in the dog basket, who knows at the moment. Sometime in the future it will all come out in the wash. Maybe we will get SHB-3 drilled for half price.
800m--not very deep for oil exploration but gets them at the depth for Sprayberry if it exists in their patch. Jala Capital annual income only about $136,000, I make about the same myself but without any overheads, tight rock needs fraccing, which means extra costs inc proppant and service costs, often high water cut requiring treatment for recycling. Some photos of the scrap metal --sorry above ground assets would be nice. Better if the lease was 10000ft deep to get into the Wolfcamp. If the DD shows better potential and if there is a possibility of deepening the lease then they are at least somewhere near the right place though. University lands are reportedly good in terms of co-operation so its better than some entirely corrupt African scam. Companies are still extracting oil from Midland with better technology being utilised to revisit previously assumed depleted fields, so if they get the right advice and recruit someone that knows something about field work they may be in with a chance. I always said Benin was a non starter, way too far outside the scope of Zenith's ability in terms of costs and operational ability, others disagreed at the time and tried to spin it as being better than Tilapia which it wasn't. Carrot still dangling, stick never getting any shorter. Still waiting. Just rambling no advice to either buy or sell. Delete the post if it doesn't suit the approved narrative. If Ageos is still watching, he/would have a hugely more knowledgeable view on the location, depth of the fields and of the overall opportunity---wakey wakey.
What they tell us is likely to be dependant upon what the well situation is like. If they have to do some repairs or further integrity testing and then pump the concrete and then test its integrity they may wait until that is all done and dusted before saying owt. --Well, it's what I would do, and then start the test and notify the world a couple of days after the test had started confident that the thing is going ahead as expected. Could be next week or next month. On the plus side, the test period will be pdq, so once they get started the results will be upon us sharpish.
Hey Photo. Hope all is well with you. We are finally getting back to the future so to speak here, from the time we were obviously over priced based upon expectation to hopefully regaining to those levels based on reality.